Since absolutely nothing of importance happened today, it’s clearly time for… more Sports Night than you can shake a stick at!

• From Angela’s No-Frills Sports Night Page: the Sports Night Drinking Game. Good stuff, although I would add “Jeremy berates himself (out loud) for talking to himself (out loud) — 1 drink” at the very least. Also see the superb FAQ section, which answers the eternal question, “How is it that Dan forgot he was ever in Spain?

• A selection of Sports Night scripts. Includes the original script for “Eli’s Coming“, which answers the aforementioned Dan-in-Spain question, and the original script for “How Are Things in Glocca Morra?”, before it was re-written to account for Robert Guillame‘s real-life stroke.

• Who Would You Kill On Sports Night? To my astonishment, Isaac beats out everyone. Even Gordon. It is a sick, sick world we live in.

• I Can’t Believe It’s Not Sports Night! Ladies and gentlemen, I have scoured the Internet to provide you with only the finest of Sports Night Fan Fiction. And here it is, on a silver platter: behold Episode One of “Season Three”. I hereby grant this fan-written episode the highest possible rating: “Actually Pretty Good.” Yes, really. The rest of the episodes in “Season Three” are a little more uneven, but you take what you can get. (I should note that when I said, “scoured the Internet”, I specifically excluded the wonder that is Sports Night Slash Fiction. I love you all, but not quite that much.)

• Television Without Pity: Sports Night. Able staff member Daniel MacEachern handles his Sports Night recaps in typical Television Without Pity style. Pick one character on the show that you “like” just to prove that you don’t hate the show with every fiber of your being, and proceed to tear into everyone and everything else on the show with a clear conscience. Actually, Daniel goes one better — not only does he like Isaac, but he also likes (minor character) Kim. (Although I think Daniel’s appreciation for Kim comes from a less-than-pure place.)

  And that’s the problem with Television Without Pity — can you really trust the recappers? For example, take Jake 2.0. From the recap ratings (a nearly consistent string of As and A-pluses) it seems like it would be a good show. On the other hand, the recapper seems completely in lust with Jake 2.0’s nanotechnology-powered nerd superhero, so maybe she’s not the most reliable source of information.

• Finally… a Reliable Source indicates that not only do Josh Malina‘s parents (Mr. and Mrs. Malina) attend a Conservative shul in the Los Angeles area, but Joshua Malina himself showed up for Yom Kippur services. It’s a good thing I wasn’t there — I probably would have been tripping over myself to run over and say, “Dude! I loved you in Sports Night, man!” or something similarly asinine. Fortunately, our Reliable Source has much better manners than I do.

First, a belated Happy New Year to all. This year’s Rosh Hashana was very nice… except for the Saturday morning service, where we made the mistake of sitting in front of five women who spent the entire time talking, giggling, unwrapping candy very loudly, and generally being royal pains in the tuchus. The strange thing was that while three of the women were teenagers, the other two were fifty-something women — and as far as I could tell, the fifty-somethings were the instigators. Anyway, I tried giving them the stink-eye once, which resulted in about two minutes of blessed silence. Maybe I’m just not good at giving the stink-eye. Maybe you have to reach a certain age for it to become effective. What I really should have done was to tell them something like, “Hi. You see that scroll up there? That’s the Torah, our most sacred book. You know what that boy is doing up there? He’s reading from our most sacred book. That’s something that’s been going on for at least a hundred generations. And if you can’t pretend to respect that, the very least you can do is shut the hell up.” However, that course of action probably would have fallen a bit short of our ancient New Year values of Repentance, Prayer, and Charity, so I’m doing my best to let it go.

So far I’m not doing a very good job.

Sunday was a bit more pleasant. Nancy was in town, and we went wine-tasting at Picchetti and Ridge. The afternoon was educational, if only because Nancy informed me that Picchetti is pronounced with a “K” sound, not a “CH” sound. Good thing Nancy’s around to keep me from sounding like a total rube. And speaking of being a total rube, I even had the presence of mind to keep my mouth shut when the conversation at Picchetti turned to the infamous “Two Buck Chuck“. Although the guy behind the bar was very down-to-earth and helpful, he was horrified that people drink Charles Shaw wine and actually like it.

Not surprisingly, the Slate Wine Guy thinks much the same thing: “Having recently tried the Charles Shaw merlot, I can unequivocally state that I would switch to beer or go on the wagon before making a habit of this plonk.” (Yikes, switch to beer! Heaven forfend.) The Slate Wine Guy also doesn’t think much of California wines in general, opining that “the 1970s and 1980s was [sic] the golden age of California winemaking.” I had thought that the 1970s were the age of Ernest and Julio Gallo, but my memories of the 70s are admittedly a bit fuzzy. I suppose the 70s did give us the famous California wine vs. French Wine taste test, so maybe the Slate Wine Guy has a point. I dunno. All I can say is that my highly refined “thumbs-up, thumbs-down” wine methodology works for me. These days you can walk into any supermarket in California and see row upon row of sub-$10 wine… some of which is awful, and some of which tastes great as far as I’m concerned. Personally, I think we’re living in a Golden Age of Wine with respect to both price and choice.

You know, I know that Charles Shaw wine isn’t “good”. I know that when I drink it, the experts are telling my brain that it is not supposed to be flavorful and delicious. After all these years, you know what I realize? Ignorance is bliss.

I’d like to take this opportunity to offer a hearty congratulations to Mike McGee. Earlier this month Mike did all his fellow South Bay Areans proud by winning the National Poetry Slam Championship. That’s right — the reigning Poetry Slam champ is from San Jose. Not San Francisco, not Los Angeles, New York, or Chicago, but San Jose. I just can’t believe that I had to read about it in the local free paper as opposed to hearing it from Sam directly.

Not that I can blame Sam for this. It’s not like he didn’t try. “Hey Evan — Mike is performing up in The City tonight — want to come?” “Nah, I’m tired, and The City is way too far.” “Hey Evan — Mike is performing in San Jose tonight.” “Nah, I’m seeing a movie.” Excuse after excuse. Truth is, I’ve never cared much for slam poetry. I had long ago placed slam poetry in a box labelled “Not-Art”, along with Anguished Teenage Poetry and Jonathan Franzen novels. And so I figured that even someone with Mike McGee’s quicksilver brilliance wasn’t worth getting off my duff to go see. It never occurred to me that he might actually be good. As in, really good. What an unsupportive jerk I was. Sigh.

Vincent Gallo: “If a fat pig like Roger Ebert doesn’t like my movie, then I’m sorry for him.”

Roger Ebert: “It is true that I am fat, but one day I will be thin, and he will still be the director of ‘The Brown Bunny.'”

That Roger Ebert, he’s growing positively Churchillian in his old age.

So last Tuesday Lawrence Lessig sent me an email asking me and most everyone else in his address book to sign the “Reclaim the Public Domain” petition.¹ Now, ordinarily I’m dubious about online petitions. Take the recent media deregulation debacle: the FCC received on the order of twenty comments for and 200,000 comments against, and Michael Powell went ahead and did it anyway. Hey, who knows — maybe each pro-deregulation comment was on average 10,000 times more persuasive than its anti-deregulation counterpart. If the bulk of the anti-deregulation comments came from where I think they came from, that ratio wouldn’t be surprising.

Nevertheless, the “Reclaim the Public Domain” campaign is a good idea, and it does come from one of my personal heroes, and it was, as Lessig pointed out, his birthday. So how could I say no? More to the point, how could anyone say no? Unless you think the proposed statute doesn’t go far enough. Otherwise, if you want perpetual copyright protection over your work, is paying one dollar after the first fifty years too much to ask? (It appears that hordes of well-heeled² lobbyists are already answering, “Yes.”)

This is the kind of thing that just makes me want to rush off to law school, damnit. The problem is that maybe I could get involved in some activism as a student, but by the time I graduate it will be the year 2008. At the rate things are going, by then the battle will be over and I’ll just be another debt-ridden young IP lawyer trying to get a job. I imagine it’s rather hard to convince a company that you’ll fight tooth-and-nail to protect their intellectual property when deep down you don’t think fighting tooth-and-nail is always the ethical thing to do. Now is intellectual property a good thing? Absolutely. My mother is an author; my dad’s company makes innovative cancer treatment machines. Their livelihood depends on protection for their intellectual property. But do I believe in intellectual property über alles? Hell, no.

I suppose all lawyers struggle with this issue: how to best serve your client while adhering to your own personal ethics.³ Obviously there’s no magic formula, but it seems that most lawyers can find a niche if they look hard enough. Some lawyers want to be public defenders. Others want to be prosecutors for the state of Texas. There’s something for everybody.

I’m just wondering if the choices are a little more limited for IP lawyers. How many openings does the EFF have, anyway?

1. I should point out that “Lawrence Lessig sent me an email…” might give you the false impression that we, like, hang out and drink beer and stuff. No, no. The reason I meandered my way into his address book is because I recently asked him a couple of questions over email about law school, to which he graciously responded.

2. Is there any other kind of lobbyist?

3. Presuming you have some.

For a week or two, I had been hanging around the local Apple Store, waiting for Master of Orion III for the Macintosh to come out. Of course, this is not the most efficient way to get a new game, but that’s okay — I just like the Apple Store aesthetic anyway. Although it was a bit disturbing when a middle-aged gentleman walked up to me and started asking me questions about the iMac line. I was totally confused, until I suddenly realized I was wearing half-rimmed glasses, a black polo shirt, black belt and shoes, and clean, pressed khakis. Suddenly it all made sense. The Apple Store aesthetic is a powerful force.

Well, finally Master of Orion III arrived. Now, some reviewers have complained that this game is too complicated and slow-paced. My response to that is: if you don’t like setting budgetary policy, managing local and empire-wide tax levels, zoning planetary developmental regions, and arguing over affairs of state with your peers in the Galactic Senate, well then I guess you’re not cut out to be a Galactic Overlord, are you?

The game does have its difficulties — most of which are obviated by simply giving up control and letting the AI do its work. Space combat is just one example. I’d like to be able to control my ships… but by the time I’ve manually selected all my task forces and given them orders, the enemy has already powered up weapons, launched fighter squadrons, swept me with sensors, identified and targetted my vessels, fired off a devastating missile salvo, destroyed half of my fleet, made off with my daughters, and keyed my car. So I have to give the battle AI full control. It’s kind of sad, but at least I get to watch a pretty light show. And I can still rotate the battlefield and zoom the camera in and out. I have a theory that doing this helps my forces, somehow.

Anyway, I thought I’d share the following account of the first game I managed to win on “Medium” difficulty. As Dave Barry likes to say, I swear I am not making any of this up.

My chosen species was the Imsaeis, a large, bloated race of floating gas giant dwellers. (The game documentation describes them as being outwardly “cheerful” and “agreeable”, while secretly “striving to be in control”.) The game began with a long phase of peaceful expansion, trade, and colonization. Life was good. But all of a sudden, another race launched a surprise attack on one of my worlds! Shocked and outraged, there was nothing to do but declare total war. I immediately went to my allies, through private channels and in the Senate. I begged them, bribed them, and even demanded that they assist me in the struggle — or at least condemn my attackers for their misdeeds. But nobody would agree to help. In fact, some of them even seemed angered by my behavior.

I would have to go it alone.

First the covert war began. My enemy had already infiltrated my territory with spies and saboteurs, with orders to blow up key buildings and demoralize my population. To root these agents out, I was forced to drastically increase my internal security measures (by adjusting the slider on the helpfully labelled “Oppressometer”). This led to not a small amount of unrest amongst my citizens. I also retaliated with my own spies, hoping to assassinate key leaders and probe the enemy’s technological capabilities.

Soon the “black ops” phase gave way to the war itself. My massive economy had enabled me to construct a mighty armada, which I launched deep into his territory. Our fleets met, and my larger numbers and superior technology carried the day. I soon achieved space superiority and began landing troops. But to my great surprise, his ground resistance proved particularly tenacious, and I was forced to order my troops to hold their ground while I called in reinforcements. Eventually I managed to sweep his organized armies and his local militia forces aside. And thus the war was over, and his population properly pacified. Err, liberated.

Shortly thereafter, all the other species recognized that my military and economic superiority gave me an overwhelming lead over them all. So they all banded together and did the only logical thing they could… they elected me President of the Galaxy, ending the game on a peaceful and happy note.

I’m pretty sure that this is how these things generally work out.

Last evening I saw Sarah in her high school production of Kiss Me, Kate. I mention this because I thought everyone would like to know that my little sister is quite probably the greatest actress of her generation. And possibly the greatest singer of her generation too (what with the mediocre competition and all). You heard it here first.

The other kids were also pretty good, particularly her co-star and the two gangsters. The latter even had helpful advice to offer, in an impromptu educational segment of the show:

Brush up your Shakespeare
Start doing it now.
Brush up your Shakespeare
And the women you will wow.

Ah, so that’s why I’ve stuck with those MOTWM classes for so many years. Although I have to admit that the correlation between the wowing of women and one’s knowledge of Shakespeare is not as clear-cut as the gangsters allege. Maybe I’m hanging out in the wrong bars?

Anyway, this quarter we won’t be doing the English Renaissance for a few more weeks. Right now we’re focusing on pre-Renaissance France, a subject that would be far less confusing if the French nobility had been just a little more innovative in naming their male heirs. For example: in the late fourteenth century, the King (Charles) goes mad, but not before he has a son (Charles) who succeeds in mostly unifying France. He has a son (Louis) who ends up fleeing his father’s wrath and living temporarily with the France’s great rival, his uncle, the Duke of Burgundy. After his father’s (Charles’s) death, Louis takes the throne, where he soon becomes embroiled in a conflict with his cousin (Charles), now Duke of Burgundy. After many years Louis defeats Charles, fends off the English, establishes the present-day borders of France, and has a son (Charles), who invades Italy and sparks the Italian Wars. Charles dies young and without an heir, so his cousin (Louis) takes the throne, assisted by a dashing young military leader, the Duke of Bourbon (Charles), who will figure prominently later on…

And on it goes. Thank goodness American history does not have this problem, recent presidents aside. (I, for one, have trouble keeping my John Adams straight from my John Quincy Adams. I’ve just resorted to mentally assigning the second one with a little flag, “less important”.) One hopes that we do not continue on this path of modelling ourselves after French nobility. However, I hear that George W. Bush’s young nephew, George P. Bush, grandson of George and son of Jeb (Duke of Florida), has political aspirations. I smell trouble.

Last weekend was a good weekend for dinners. A dinner to celebrate the Sabbath, a dinner to celebrate my Mom and Dad’s collective birthday, and a dinner to celebrate Marissa’s new book.

At that last dinner, I met Marissa’s friend Jenn, who is a writer, and her companion Yony, a string theorist. I was tempted to ask Yony an incisive, thoughtful question, such as, “Like… ummm… why is it eleven dimensions, anyway?” Of course the last time I asked a string theorist that very question, the string theorist proceeded to launch into what can only be described as ten uninterrupted minutes of Mathematical Gobbledygook. My physics knowledge has since waned considerably¹, and I thought it best not to risk asking again.

At one point in the dinner, Jenn casually mentioned that one of her characters looks like Sheena Easton. At that, poor M’ris blew a synapse. I certainly sympathize with Marissa here — when you imagine what a character looks like, and then you see what someone else thinks they look like, it can come as quite a shock. For example, when I discovered that the title role in the upcoming Alexander the Great movie will be played by Leonardo DiCaprio, I was stunned. They couldn’t pick anybody else? Heath Ledger, maybe?

That got me thinking about my (imaginary) screenplay for the 1527 Sack of Rome. Machiavelli is a no-brainer: Jeremy Irons (or maybe Viggo Mortensen in a pinch). Baldesar Castliogne is a bit tougher. Sir Anthony Hopkins could pull it off, given sufficient facial hair. But what about the cowardly Pope Clement VII? The brilliant Isabella d’Este? The self-aggrandizing Benvenuto Cellini? And last but not least, our tragic hero, The Constable (Duke of Bourbon)? Suggestions are welcome on this pressing issue.

Interesting side note on Yony: when he graduates this year, he’ll be taking a short internship with Google Labs. This leads us to the following dilemma:

1. Is it ethical to be nice to someone solely for the purpose that they put in a good word for you at their company?
2. Would candy and flowers be out of line?

1. My loss of mathematical prowess probably has nothing to do with the string theorist and his Mathematical Gobbledygook all those years ago. In particular, I wish to emphasize that it is highly unlikely that the string theorist incanted some sort of voodoo hex that nowadays prevents me from solving anything other than the most elementary partial differential equations.

I was out this morning listening to Forum on the car radio. The topic of the hour was the nascent Gray Davis recall campaign. One angry caller, a self-identified Democrat, said he was fully in favor of the recall. After ranting a bit about Davis, he softened his tone and ended with a wistful, “The recall will help us heal the soul of our politics.” Now any ordinary mortal is sure to go into involuntary spasms of laughter upon hearing the words “heal”, “soul”, and “politics” coupled with the word “recall” — and I am proud to report that I am no exception. It was a good thing I had just finished parking the car. Whoever said talk radio isn’t dangerous?

Now the reason I was parking the car was in order to pick up Jedediah Purdy’s new book, Being America. I had read about this book a few days ago, and that triggered some memories. Hey — wasn’t that the young guy who wrote that book a few years ago about how we are too ironic and cynical and lazy, and that we really need to, like, knock it off? Why, yes, it was. I had remembered that at the time I had really wanted to buy Purdy’s first book (For Common Things), but I never got around to it and I eventually forgot all about it.

However, now I was a bit torn on whether or not to shell out for the book. Just a week ago I got burned on The Spooky Art. I had figured that if Norman Mailer at the age of eighty can’t tell me something interesting about writing, then who the hell can? Well, the book had a few nice bits here and there. But for the most part it was arrogant and crusty and — in the words of my mother when she glanced at the teaser-quotes on the back cover — clichéd. (Frankly, Steven King with his On Writing beats the pants off of Norman Mailer, both in the about-writing area and in the irrelevant-personal-fluff area.)

So, not quite sure what to do, I started looking for reviews of Purdy’s first book. Fortunately, I didn’t have to go further than this irredeemably nasty Salon.com review to settle the issue. Anyone who can work the poseurs at Salon.com into such a frothing latter has got to be a Force for Good. I rushed out to the local bookstore and got a copy of For Common Things. And a copy of Being America — in hardback. Just for spite.

Ze üpgrade vas a success! Ahem.

Brian Montopoli thinks that NPR is too homogenous. Once assimilated into the NPR Collective, even poor Tavis Smiley cannot avoid taking on the dreaded NPR Voice:

As we waited in the hallway, some of us tried to make small talk; others found a quiet corner where they could go over their lines. But we were all thinking about the same thing: The Voice, the NPR Voice, and how the hell we were going to pull it off. The Voice is tough to describe, but you know it when you hear it: It’s serious, carefully modulated, genially authoritative. It rings with unspoken knowledge of good wine and The New York Times Book Review. We were terrified of it.

Although not everyone finds it terrifying:

It is an extremely appealing Voice–to a certain demographic. About 20 million people tune into NPR each week. Their mean income is $78,216, and their average age hovers just below 50. Nearly 90 percent of those who shared their racial information are “non-Black/non-Hispanic,” according to NPR survey data. In other words, the people whose Zeitgeist Edwards et al., have been extraordinarily effective in catching are affluent, middle-aged white liberals, who tune in to the drivetime shows on their way to work and sometimes continue listening for the rest of the day. This demographic just adores NPR, and NPR gives the love right back.

I think Montopoli is giving NPR real short shrift in the diversity department. Yes, NPR sponsors a great many shows that appeal to affluent white coastal liberals. But c’mon, let’s be fair — it also sponsors shows that appeal to affluent white Midwestern liberals. For example, take A Prairie Home Companion (please!) I suppose the show does have a couple of redeeming features (“Guy Noir, Private Eye”). But that’s not enough to save it. Honestly, how many Sven and Ole jokes can this California boy be expected to take?¹

Perhaps there are some cultural divides that can never and should never be crossed.

Addendum: the above should not be construed as saying that Midwestern humor consists solely of “Sven and Ole” jokes, or even that A Prairie Home Companion constitutes canonical Midwestern humor.² Not a value judgement — it’s just different, kind of like saying I like vanilla, you like chocolate.³ PHC is just a bit too deadpan and understated for my tastes. I’m usually thinking, “Wait… was that a joke? I think it was… or was it? Should I laugh or what?” Now sure, I like Wry and I like Understated, but PHC is too much for me. Or, rather, too little. Put another way: between Garrison Keillor reading the news from Lake Wobegon and Steve Martin running around in circles banging pots together and shrieking, “Oklahoma-Oklahoma-Oklahoma-Oklahoma!”, I’ll take Steve.

Anyway, one last thing on NPR. Montopoli sets up a rather strange distinction between NPR (staid liberal white boomer programming) and PRI (“hip cultural programming”). Now I’ll grant you This American Life, but The World (a co-production with BBC News)? Marketplace?? Who are we kidding here?⁴

1. The worst thing is that A Prairie Home Companion is on all the freakin’ time on weekends. You can’t get away from it. This weekend is their Valentine’s Day Special show. Help!

2. Let alone that all Midwesterners should think it’s hilarious. Heavens.

3. Actually, that’s precisely backwards: I like chocolate, and statistically speaking, you like vanilla.

4. Of course this assumes that we go so far as to accept the premise that any public radio program could be hip and edgy. At this point we’ve probably gone off the deep end anyway.

For about thirty seconds on Saturday, I thought there was some kind of Challenger retrospective going on. Then I understood. I caught some of the news on the radio, some on the web… but honestly, Saturday was one of those days that I’m glad I don’t have a TV.

This morning on Forum they devoted one hour to Shuttle. No “experts” this time, just an hour of listeners calling in. Now I live in the Bay Area — the Left Coast — and so I certainly wasn’t surprised to hear caller after caller chime in with, oh dear isn’t it sad about the families, but what about the murderous US plans for hegemony and world domination, blah blah blah? Still, it got a bit monotonous after a while.

Some thinkers like to speculate about whether human mind is like a computer. If this line of thinking is true, I wonder, are some people just not given enough RAM at birth? Are they simply unable to handle more than one resource-intensive process at once?¹

Finally near the end of the show a young man called in and said (paraphrasing), “I’m an anti-war activist. I’ve been in all the local marches. I’ve written my Congressman. I vote… And the thing is, I believe war represents one of the worst things human beings can do, while space exploration represents one of the best. Let’s not confuse the two.”

If the anti-war movement had more folks like him… well, there’d be an anti-war movement worth speaking about.

1. Addendum: M’ris informs me that Timprov says, “And some people are given those original Pentiums with the floating point problem.” Too bad that this sort of problem can’t be fixed in the next rev.